130 Sacramento families could qualify for $500 a month in extra income. Here’s how to apply

The United Way California Capital Region is accepting applications for the third round of a program that guarantees a basic income, in this case $500 a month to 130 Sacramento County residents for a year.

Participants will be chosen from two county districts whose supervisors pledged $1 million to fund the program, said Dawnté Early, the chief executive officer of the local United Way.

Sacramento County Supervisors Phil Serna of District 1 and Patrick Kennedy of District 2 leveraged a philanthropic gift from Sacramento-based Sierra Health Foundation to expand the number of households to benefit from this round of financial assistance.

At a news conference Monday, Early said the program aligns with the United Way’s mission to build stronger, healthier and more compassionate communities. Both she and Kennedy described universal basic income as one way to prevent homelessness.

“$300 to $500 can be the difference between staying in your home and becoming unhoused,” Early said. “Locally, families are losing their homes or wondering how they’re going to feed their families and who is going to watch their children while they’re at work. They cannot afford to wait for assistance. They need assistance now.”

Serna’s District 1 includes neighborhoods such as South Natomas, North Natomas, Robla, Del Paso Heights, Northgate, Gardenland, Downtown, Midtown, Curtis Park and portions of Land Park. Kennedy’s District 2 includes portions of Land Park, South Land Park, Pocket, Meadowview, portions of Elk Grove, Fruitridge Manor, Avondale, and some areas of unincorporated Sacramento County.

Sacramento effort began with MacKenzie Scott gift

United Way California Capital Region first kicked off its guaranteed income program with a portion of a $10 million gift received from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in December 2020. The organization provided $300 monthly to 100 Sacramento County residents from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2023.

The city of Sacramento teamed up with Early’s team for a second round of the program that currently pays $500 a month to 80 city residents. This round began July 1 and runs through June 30, 2024. Early said they decided to increase the payment after consultation with first-round participants.

Also for that second round, United Way brought in researchers at Sacramento State University, led by sociology professor Ethan Evans, to evaluate the impact of the guaranteed income program.

So far, Evans told The Bee, his team has reviewed data from more than 10,000 surveys submitted by individuals when they applied to participate in the second round.

Additional surveys are planned toward the end of payments and six months after the program ends, offering small incentives to promote participation.

The initial surveys have already provided some insights into the lives of those applying for the United Way’s guaranteed income program, Evans said.

“We asked: If you had an unexpected $400 expense, like a car repair or a medical bill, would you be able to pay cash to pay it off? Only 9% said that they would be able to do that, and that compares to ... 37% of respondents in a national survey (who) said that they could meet that $400 expense,” Evans said. “So folks in this program have significantly more pressure on how they spend their money.”

The survey then asked how they would pay that unexpected expense, Evans said, giving them choices such as borrowing from someone else, selling something, using a credit card or “I don’t know what I’d do.”

Almost a third of the people chose that last statement, Evans said.

Although 62% of the 10,000-plus respondents said they have a spending plan, he said, that same percentage said that their income wasn’t high enough to meet their monthly expenses. Nearly two-thirds said they had paid a late fee in the last two months. Nearly half said that their income varies somewhat or a lot month to month.

Evans said participants are getting their payments through a debit card, and he’s hoping to aggregate data showing what the money was used to buy.

What surveys show people buy with guaranteed income

As cities across the nation have begun guaranteed income pilot programs, many have begun sharing survey results on spending. Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, for instance, report that most purchases have covered basic necessities.

About a year ago, the city of New Orleans found that participants in a pilot program there spent:

▪ 48.8% of the funds on food and groceries;

▪ 32.1% at retailers and discount superstores on items such as food, clothes, household goods and hygiene products;

▪ 8.2% on transportation costs such as gas and car repairs;

▪ 4.5% for housing and utilities;

▪ Other expenses included loan repayments, medical expenses and tuition.

Locally, Yolo County has launched a basic income program that gives monthly cash payments to local parents with children under 6. The 24-month pilot, which has payments ranging from $1,200 to $1,500 a month, began in April 2022.

The city of Stockton and its former Mayor Michael D. Tubbs actually played a seminal role in laying the foundation for these universal basic income initiatives with the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration. It paid $500 a month to 125 residents from 2019-2021.

While critics have said that such programs discourage people from seeking a job, the Stockton program reported that 28% of its participants were employed full-time when they began receiving payments. One year later, 40% of recipients were employed full-time.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania then looked at statistics for a control group of applicants. It saw only a 5% gain in full-time employment.

The state of California, through the Department of Social Services, will soon jump into this arena as well, providing a basic income to pregnant women and young adults who have recently aged out of the foster care system. The state awarded $25.5 million to seven pilot programs around California, and each of the agencies had to come up with private funding to match 50% of what the state funded.

Foster youth will benefit from program

Serita Cox, co-founder and chief executive officer of the nonprofit resource network iFoster Inc., said that the state planned to provide a little more than $4.76 million to assist foster youth through her organization. Working with researchers from the Urban Institute and the University of California, Berkeley, iFoster will randomly select participants from 51 counties, including Sacramento County.

Cox said that of 1,353 young adults in California, 96 in the four-county capital region will meet the age criteria for the program. iFoster will select 600 to receive $750 a month for 18 months. Berkeley and the Urban Institute will study the group to assess the impact of the funds.

“Within four years of aging out, 50% of foster youth are homeless, 50% are unemployed,” Cox said. “Those (who are) employed are only earning $7,500 a year. In the course of their lifetime, only 8% of foster youth will ever get a post-secondary degree.”

DSS spokesman Theresa Mier said iFoster and other award recipients should be opening their programs for enrollment soon.

Sacramento State researchers also are ensuring that participants in the United Way program are randomly selected. Applicants will find what they need to apply, including information on income eligibility, at YourLocalUnitedWay.org.

Chet Hewitt, the chief executive officer of Sierra Health Foundation, said guaranteed income is particularly crucial since so many pandemic-era measures ended once the economy re-opened. In particular, he said, Congress increased the child, raised the qualifying age to include 17-year-olds and allowed some Americans to collect advance payments.

“For those of you who received your expanded child care tax credit directly into your payment during the pandemic years — and, of course that program has sunset — you know how important those contributions of families actually were,” Hewitt said. “Here in America, they actually cut child poverty to its lowest recorded level in the history of this particular country. That’s what guaranteed income has the potential to actually do: Change the direction, the lives, the experience, the social-emotional health of young people in families across this particular region.”